Wireless networks have many advantages, and continue to become more popular. A basic problem in wireless networks is the limited resources available for communications between nodes in the networks. Packet transmission must overcome problems inherent to wireless communications. Noise, distance, frequency allocations, and conflicts between nodes are some problems faced in wireless networks. In addition, power resources are considered scarce and critical for mobile wireless nodes.
Accordingly, the standards that have developed for wireless network communications must provide a communication scheme that is reliable and efficient in view of the limitations imposed by the communication medium and other resources. Bluetooth is an example scheme. In Bluetooth, a master node controls communications among a group including the master and a set of slaves. In Bluetooth, the master acts as a relay for all network communications, and schedules communications to avoid conflicts, e.g., more than one source node are addressing the same destination node.
Other communication standards and techniques in wireless networks also have limitations. There remains a need for an improved wireless network scheduling method and system. The invention is directed to this need.